Tuesday, April 29, 2008

I went to see an early screening of A TALE OF LEGENDARY LIBIDO (Garujiki in Korean) last night. Man, it really reminded me of why I do not write more reviews and stuff about the movies themselves on this blog -- because so many of them are so very, very bad. And I really do not want to spend my time slamming one terrible film after another.

LIBIDO is the latest retelling of a well known smutty song from the 19th century. It is the story of Gang-soe, a tteok-seller in a remote mountain town, famed for its libidinous women. Gang-soe is miserable, though, because he has such a small penis that the town's women laugh at him constantly.

So one day Gang-soe drinks a magic potion that gives him superhuman virility. And he drinks waaaaaay too much of it. Comedy ensues, followed by the inevitable (for a Korean comedy) 30 minutes or so of crying and tragedy.

Seems like an easy set-up for some easy, sex-based laughs, right? Wrong. I think I half-giggled once and smirked maybe twice, but overall this movie is witless and dull. Director Shin Han-sol is remarkably incompetent, with no idea how to tell a basic story or a joke. The film shifts tones constantly, although remaining generally torpid throughout. On the rare occasions the movie is not lousy, it is actually offensive.

Not a great weekend for the movie business in general. Even worse for Korean film, with local pics getting just the No. 7 and No. 8 spots (unless you count THREE KINGDOMS, which Taewon Entertainment invested in, but I do not).

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Kind of a miserable weekend at the box office, with only one movie topping $1 million, TAKEN. Everything else is mostly sputtering, waiting for the summer movie madness to begin.

(FYI, this year, summer begins April 30, with the release of IRON MAN).

Not a good weekend for Korean movies, either, with only two films in the top 10 -- THE GUARD POST at No. 5 and THE CHASER down in ninth.

If it makes you feel any better, it was not even a good weekend for Hollywood. Most of the foreign films on the chart this week were from other parts -- TAKEN is French (from Luc Besson's crew), THREE KINGDOMS and EMPRESS AND THE WARRIORS are from Hong Kong.

For those keeping track at home, the current overall standings are:- Korea at 52.2 percent of the year's box office- United States at 36.6 percent- Europe at 6.6 percent- China and Hong Kong at 4.1 percent- Japan at 1.2 percent

Monday, April 21, 2008

So, CASS has a new beer available -- Cass Lemon. While the original Cass is probably my Korean beer of choice, most of Cass's other brands have not impressed. Cass Light is as bad as Capri. Cass Red tastes like the water in my sink after I've washed a lot of dishes.

And now there is Cass Lemon. Tonight I tried my first one. The weather has been warm lately, the kind of weather you might like a Corona with a wedge of lemon or lime in it. Good time for a lemon beer, right?

Wrong. It was bad. Bad bad bad. The first thing that came to mind? That scene in ANCHORMAN, when Paul Rudd tried Panther cologne and one woman compared the smell to Bigfoot (or, more specifically, a part of Bigfoot's anatomy). That is what Cass Lemon is like.

To be more specific... it is a light Korean beer, with less flavor than usual and an overwhelming fake lemon flavor infused into it. It tastes like they took Cass Light and mixed it with Lemon Pledge.

Bigfoot.

Why cannot one Korean beer company make a good beer? Just for variety... Just to see what would happen.

Judging by the promo, this could be one good-looking movie. But what makes it more relevant to me is that you get a few glimpses of the gangster being played by Lee Byung-hun.

When I talked to Lee last year, it was right just before he went to Hong Kong to shoot the film. He was in the middle of a months-long workout/ low-carb program to buff up for the role. You can see the results around the four-minute mark.

Click on the above link to see the promo, or you can just watch it below:

Thursday, April 17, 2008

I checked out the IRON MAN press junket in Seoul a couple of days ago, which was a pretty amusing event. Last year I missed out on the TRANSFORMERS fun, but CJ Entertainment and Paramount similarly threw another press bash this year. Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. were on a power tour of the world to promote the film -- Australia, Korea, Paris, Berlin, New York, LA, and New York again. Kind of neat to see such a big marketing campaign up close.

CJ and Paramount invited about 30 journalists from around Asia for the one and only Asia press event at the Shilla Hotel. And of course there were dozens of local journalists. There were laser lights and b-boy dancers and a whole bunch of bells and whistles. Mssrs. Favreau and Downey Jr. both seemed legitimately surprised by all the hoopla. Kind of annoying, actually, to have 15-minutes of mindless noise and then having less than 20 minutes of Q&A. Only three questions came from the audience, including one from the Korea Times and one from the JoongAng Daily.

(One of whom asked "What do you think of Korea?" and "What do you think of Korean movies?". I was kind of shocked no one asked if they liked kimchi).

Later in the day, Jon and Rob (because we became that close) had a more sedate Q&A with us foreign reporters, high up in the rooftop lounge of the Shilla Hotel. That was more useful and interesting. Only TV reporters got any one-on-one time with them, but even then, they had barely five minutes. Really fast, in and out.

Fortunately, both Jon and Rob were pretty interesting in their short interviews. Jon seemed especially surprised how much freedom he had to do what he wanted, with little studio interference. I guess one the suits had their advertising campaign mapped out, actors cast, Iron Man armor designed and fights laid out, they had little interest in the talky bits.

It was especially interesting hearing their thoughts because both of them are from a more art-house background, so creating a $180 million action film was an odd change of pace. Rather intriguing to hear their reasoning about why they made the change. Basically, in this day and age, they said, the art-house film isn't really an art-house film anymore. Even "small", artsy films are huge exercises in marketing and financing. If you are going to put yourself through that kind of hell, why not do it for a film that lots of people will actually see? Can't say that I disagree with their logic.

As for the film IRON MAN, I was lucky enough to see that in IMAX earlier in the week. Not sure what kind of embargo there is supposed to be, but you can easily find dozens of reviews all over the Internet already. The story is pretty faithful to the IRON MAN mythology. Downey is great. The armor looks cool (with a tinge of manga to its design). The story is told with some intelligence (at least by the sliding scale that is the superhero movie) and wit. The action itself was perhaps a little underwhelming -- not terrible, but not the orgiastic overkill that Michael Bay would do (thankfully).

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Nothing really notable to say this week. Except that I just realized that last week I wrote FORBIDDEN KINGDOM when I should have written THREE KINGDOMS. I need to change last week's chart, but in the meantime, sorry about the error.

Otherwise, nothing too exciting. But will be interesting to see how IRON MAN does at tthe end of the month. Less than two weeks away until IRON MAN hits the screens, signifying the start of the summer movie season.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Last night was the opening of the WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IN SEOUL. I had missed the festival for a couple of years, so it was nice to return... especially since this year's opener featured several people I know.

The opening film was called TEN TEN, a collection of six shorts made to celebrate the festival's 10th edition. Most interesting to me personally was HERS AT LAST, which was directed by Helen Lee, produced by Hanna Lee, and starring a couple of friends of mine (including the not-very-Korean So Ron-go). I just hope all the fame and fortune will not go to their heads too quickly.

BLIND DATE by Jang Hee-sun was the best of the short films, about an overweight, 30-year-old woman being pressured by her mother to go on a blind date. That turns into one of the worst blind dates ever, but perhaps not unredeemable. Quite funny and well done.

DRIVING MISS GRANNY and RABBIT had some good moments, too.

This year's WFFIS opening was held at the National Museum of Korea, which is quite a venue. I had not been there since the huge building was finished and I was rather impressed.

But most of the rest of the film festival will be held at the Art Reon theater in Shinchon, a much more convenient location. Worth checking out. The section on Fantasy and Fantastic Films looks especially interesting.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

What is it with RAIN (aka Jung Ji-hoon) and TIME magazine? For the third year in a row, RAIN is competing in the TIME MAGAZINE DORKY EXCUSE TO BOOST ITS HIT RATE, otherwise known as the TIME 100. Actually, as I write this, he is not just competing -- he is dominating.

I just realized how May is shaping up to be a rather busy season for official events in Seoul (at least for event related to the kind of work I do).

In early May, we have the SEOUL DIGITAL FORUM, which always attracts a lot of big names. This year, Sumner Redstone is going to be speaking, along with a host of other important people. It is an odd event, but there are usually 2-3 forums each year that I find useful to attend.

Before the Internet age and Starcraft descended upon us, Koreans were known as voracious readers. Today... not so much. But it looks like it could be an interesting event, at least as far as these stuffy industry events go.

* * *

Funny story from the Seoul Digital Forum of two or three years ago. I attended the big opening dinner thing and ended up sitting at a table right beside the head table. At the head table was one of the major speakers, Lee Soo-man, the founder and head of SM Entertainment, of course. Sitting with Lee was Boa, the singing star (I think she might have performed a song or two).

As you would expect with this kind of event, the hall was filled with dark suited officials... people rather proud of themselves for being so important and influential, most of whom were in their 40s and 50s. Not exactly SM Entertainment's prime demographic, right?

Well, age and dignity be damned, because the important, dark-suited bigwigs were falling all over themselves to get autographs from Boa. In the middle of some important speech by some important dude, these people would half-crouch (as if hiding, but not really), weave their way through the maze of circular tables, and make their way to Boa's table, where they would put some ratty piece of paper in front of Boa to be signed. Quite humorous.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Showbox's new supernatural gore-fest THE GUARD POST and the Huayi Brothers' FORBIDDEN KINGDOM duked it out for top spot at the boxoffice this week. SK Telecom, which distributed FORBIDDEN KINGDOM in Korea, claimed that its film won the battle, with 368,000 admissions.

But according to KOBIS, THE GUARD POST was the official winner nationwide, with close to 400,000 admissions.

FORBIDDEN KINGDOM was actually co-produced by Korea's Taewon Entertainment, so it was kind of a Korean film. Not sure how it will be counted by KOBIS when it comes to determining how well Korean films did this year.

(Officially, they are at 55.1 percent of the boxoffice. Down slightly from last week, which makes me think they are calling FORBIDDEN KINGDOM a foreign production).

THE CHASER is getting really close to 5 million admissions. Or maybe it is there already (since the KOBIS chart is just 97% of the nationwide boxoffice, and it is now at 4.84 million tickets sold).

No Neil Young at the Hippy Flower Power Peace Concert. But rumors are suggesting a really off-the-wall possibility (also mentioned at that same post on my other blog).

Absolutely great concert at Club Ta over the weekend. KINGSTON RUDIESKA, HONGJA BAND, ORIENTAL LUCY and ORGELTANZ combineD for a while combination of sounds and some first-rate fun. I hope to have a review up at the KOREA GIG GUIDE before too long.

Of course, this is hardly a new thing. TIME said that NK was being deluged by South Korean TV dramas and international porn way back in 2003.

One thing I found really interesting is that the NKs apparently call such films "colored movies." I could not find the reporter's original story in Korean, sadly, so was not able to see what the actual Korean was.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Another boring week at the theaters in Korea. Most of the Hollywood films were released last year in the United States. Including top film, the surgery thriller AWAKE took the top spot with a rather wimpy $1.4 million. Then came Korean films FATE and THE CHASER.

STEP UP 2: EVEN STEPPIER and THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL are doing okay, considering the slight competition these days.

DAN IN REAL LIFE (another 2007 film) opened in seventh, as weakly as you would expect from a small comedy (which rarely travel well to Korea). DEATH DEFYING ACTS (2007) opened in eighth.

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About Me

I am a freelance writer and producer, currently living in Europe. But for over 12 years I was based in South Korea, where I scribbled for The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Newsweek, the New York Times, and more. My book about the Korean entertainment industry is out at last -- POP GOES KOREA: BEHIND THE REVOLUTION IN MEDIA, MUSIC AND INTERNET CULTURE (Stone Bridge Press).